I agree. All that follows is wild speculation, but... Maybe the utilitarianisms of history maintained concrete referents in part because the notion of "utility

I agree. All that follows is wild speculation, but... Maybe the utilitarianisms of history maintained concrete referents in part because the notion of "utility" worked somewhere in basement brain. When we pulled it shrieking into the light of consciousness it died and we buried the body under a heap of cope born of the hope that ethics could be reduced to a formalism. (Of course clever and unscrupulous people quickly figured out how to weaponize this as well)